The universities and Elsevier have closed a deal at the last moment. They had already been negotiating for a long time, as both parties were adamant in their arguments. Universities threatened to lose their subscriptions as of January and scientists were considering termination of their cooperation with Elsevier journals. The biggest stumbling block was the transition to open access. Universities do not like to see their scientific articles disappear behind a payment wall. In their view, the results of publicly funded research should be freely accessible to everybody.

Elsevier is going to open up more avenues for open access. In 2018 thirty percent of the Elsevier articles by Dutch authors should be accessible free of charge. Now open access is occasionally possible in Elsevier journals also, but not very often. The universities do not know precisely how many Dutch Elsevier articles have now been published in open access. “We don’t have the answer to that question”, says a spokesperson. “Although it is definitely not thirty percent, and not ten percent either. Otherwise we would not have had to close this deal.”

The deal will start in 2016. The details, such as keeping up to date about the number of open access articles, are to be elaborated in the coming weeks. The costs involved in the deal are not made public.

The underlying idea of open access is that scientists pay for their publication instead of taking out a subscription. That way the publication can be read by everybody. Elsevier preferred not to join in. It holds hundreds of scientific journals, including The Lancet and Cell, and makes a good deal of money out of the subscriptions. Although the journals are expensive, they are also influential. Scientists love to in publish in them, for that benefits their careers.

The Dutch government fervently advocates open access and demands all publications by Dutch scientists to be freely accessible within ten years. NWO (Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research), which funds science, is moving in that direction more and more.